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Ballad by Blexbolex
BirdCatDog by Lee Nordling
Bird & Squirrel on Ice by James Burks
Breath of Bones: A Tale of the Golem by Steve Niles
Bulldog's Big Day by Kate McMullan
Calvin Coconut: Rocket Ride by Graham Salisbury
The Children's Book on How to Use Books and Libraries by Carolyn Mott
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time by Frank Cottrell Boyce
Chomp by Carl Hiaasen
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Dragon Girl: The Secret Valley by Jeff Weigel
Elephants Cannot Dance! by Mo Willems
The Graveyard Book Graphic Novel, Volume 1 by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell
Half Magic by Edward Eager
Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa
In Real Life by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang
Mad Love by Suzanne Selfors
Miss Lina's Ballerinas by Grace Maccarone
Monsters: An Owner's Guide by Jonathan Emmett
Ollie and Claire by Tiffany Strelitz Haber
Outside In by Sarah Ellis
The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale
Purple Springs by Nellie L. McClung
Rich Cat, Poor Cat by Bernard Waber
The Rising by Kelley Armstrong
Seven Wild Sisters: A Modern Fairy Tale by Charles de Lint
Small Steps by Louis Sachar
The Thingamabob by Il Sung Na
Through the Woods by Emily Carroll
Up and Down by Oliver Jeffers
Wild Ocean by Matt Dembicki

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: 12/24/14

cover art

You'd never know it now from amount our son reads, but when he was first transitioning to chapter books, it was a rough one. The books he had the most luck with were the hybrids — the heavily illustrated ones that are just one step away from being full-fledged graphic novels. Among those first successes was Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Greg Heffley has been asked to keep a diary by his mother. He's convinced that boys don't (can't / shouldn't) keep diaries. Of course, that's a ridiculous notion — but that's the set up. Along with his entries, the pages are decorated with various amusing stick illustrations, presumably also by Greg.

Over the course of a school year, Greg goes through numerous schemes and fills in the gaps explaining how previous schemes have gone awry. For instance, he wants to build up muscle fast to survive the wresting part of P.E., so he asks for a weight set. By the time Christmas rolls around and a weight set ends up being his BIG present (in an otherwise hilariously disappointing year), the wrestling unit is long since over and Greg has moved on to his next scheme.

It's a cute book — that an adult can read in about two hours. It's also the first in a nine (at last count) book series. I know we have a couple more in the series, and those I'll read. I'm not sure, yet, if I'll actually want to read the entire series.

Four stars

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